Two years ago, she could not handle affection or being held for more than ten minutes at a time.
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She rides the bus by herself, and is learning how to speak. Now Luci is four years old and attends the Early Childhood preschool program in Oregon. “Her tenacity is what makes her mad if she can’t keep up with them as they run away, so she has to learn how to run.” Luci plays with her older sister, Molly. She had to have something that allowed her to survive in a situation where she really shouldn’t have.” It’s that spark which told Mitchell that Luci was going to be just fine. “She’s independent and sassy, which she had to have when she was born. “The girls really taught her how to walk,” said Puff. Mitchell and Puff, however, believe that the key to her success was her sisters. Luci walked for the first time right before last Christmas, after nearly a year of physical therapy and leg braces. The muscle gets atrophied and can’t be stretched out.” “If she would have stayed in crib, she would have ended up twisted. “Back then her muscle tension in her lower limbs was typical of CP,” said Mitchell.
It’s hard to pull apart what is medical and what is being in an institution your whole life.”
“The degree of her CP is questionable,” said Puff, “because she was institutionalized. They confirmed her cerebral palsy diagnosis. She will too, but you could just tell.”Īt the time the family was living in Pennsylvania and they brought Luci for an evaluation at an adoption clinic in Philadelphia. “You could see some of the other kids had a lot more trauma. You could see it in her eyes,” said Mitchell. “I could tell she was there, she just needed to come to a family. Although Luci couldn’t walk at the time, she scooted and moved around with an energy that showed Mitchell she would someday. “Any orphan is going to have some sort of emotional trauma and loss,” said Mitchell, a family physician. “Even though we probably have more resources than most, we couldn’t adopt a kid that needed 24 hour care,” said Mitchell.
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They already had their hands full with three daughters, one son, and a menagerie of adopted rescue animals. Mitchell and Puff had to be realistic about the level of need they could meet in another child. Therefore, those babies are left as orphans. The Roma culture has strong family bonds, but not enough resources to care for special needs children. Most of the orphans in Bulgaria come from the impoverished Roma community, just like Luci. “They didn’t have the human resources to even use the donations,” said Puff. Puff explored the other levels and found bags of donated toys, left unopened.
When Mitchell and Puff visited, the nurses only used one of the four floors. Since joining the European Union, Bulgaria started shutting down such orphanages due to their bad image, and placing orphans in foster care. The orphanage was a big communist-era building, originally designed to hold 165 kids. They did their best with the resources they had.” “It’s important to know that the nurses had been there twenty-five to thirty years,” said Puff. For them, with nine kids and only four hands, the best they could do was care for Luci in her crib. The nurses who cared for Luci presumed she couldn’t walk, as she was born three months premature and immediately diagnosed with cerebral palsy. That’s all they’ve ever known.” When Luci was adopted, she had a bald spot from rocking her head against the bars of the crib, a self-soothing technique. Maybe people think we’re doing some great thing to save them when we take them away from that situation, but the truth is that it’s a huge shock. You are changing the world for this kid, you basically changed their lives, but it’s not glamorous thing, not pretty. “People think about people who adopt as these wonderful, selfless human beings. “As horrible as it might be, that’s their home,” said Mitchell. Before her arrival, Mitchell and Puff read books and took classes to prepare for her transition. Bringing her to a family in another country meant taking her away from everything she knew. She could not walk, and ate only mashed food. When they first met her, she was three years old and had spent her entire life confined to a crib. Jennifer Mitchell and Nick Puff brought Luci home from Bulgaria in February 2018, after an adoption process lasting one and half years. Photo credits: Jennifer MitchellĬontinued from – “ One Heart Bulgaria, Aid for Roma Mothers“ Published in the Fern Ridge Review, October, 2019.
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